OXFORD LETTER

On animal noises & Humane Sciences

MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS

GOOD BROTHER LONDINIENSIS,

I rejoice to learn that you have now given over reading that silly London gazette the Times, which can only mislead and misdirect you about our affairs, however its weari- some supplements may enlighten you upon those of Afrique or Tartary; as was clear when Master Editor, by placing Oriel coll. in Cambridge, sought to deprive our body of a learned and lively member, and then on another page, presumed to instruct us which way to vote on a domestick mat- ter: a gross impertinency, even if (as 'tis said) that piece was writ by some new- fledged meer bachelour of All-souls coll., who by his smart answers to Warden Sparrow's quodlibets has got himself a place at that disastrous dinner-table. Howbeit, lest any of your friends have been misled either by that piece or by the published reports of our debates, I will now set you aright on that matter, being the proposed new course in Humane Sciences.

This term, Humane Sciences, has been borrowed (as it seems) from our old parent university of Paris, whose Faculty of Letters, having flourished for many centuries, was lately distorted into a Faculty of Letters and Humane Sciences; whereupon that whole society at once went to pot, with con- sequences, anno 1968, too well known to repeat here, and too sad to insist upon. This melancholy history of our dear mother should have been a salutary warning to us; but alas, we are all fated to learn by ex- perience those calamities which we might avoid by example.

You must know then that the authour of this proposed new course in our university is one Master Pringle, a deep politician of imperious will, very persuasive and not to be gainsaid by our academick governpurs; who, here as elsewhere, always yield to those who press hard enough, with the appearance of numbers behind 'em, be they science pro- fessors or turbulent students. He was bred up at Winchester college (a great nursery of power), and having afterwards become Bursar of Peterhouse in Cambridge, did whack up the rents of Albany in London, which that coll. now owns, and whereon are based the rich dishes and delicate wines nightly enjoyed at that High Table. Anno 1961 he was elected to our chair of zoology; but before coming hither he laid down cer- tain conditions, on which I must dilate a little; for hence spring all our woes.

His chief demand was that this university should build a great Tower or Folly in the University Parks, a delicious spot sacred to the Nymphs and Fauns, and one of the few green places still remaining to us besides that Elysian Meadow which the Christ-church men have so valiantly preserved. This tower was to be of prodigious height, dwarfing all other towers, but slender, like a gigantique stone beanstalk, with twenty storeys, and each storey packed with animals, superim- posed after their kind, as: moles in the base- ment, bats in the belfry, and voles, weasels, dormice, squirrels, etc. suspended between 'em. To all which Master Vice-Chancellor, Master Registrar, et al., being Wykehamists too, did readily assent, and a bill was duly drafted, wrapped up in grave, hieratick

language, and sent down to Congregation to be passed into law.

But now (God be praised) up started the guardians of our liberties, who, having deciphered those hieroglyphs and exposed their true meaning, cried out that 'twas a cheat, contrary to our fundamental! laws, and that the Parks, being sacred, should not be so violated, even to satisfy Master Pringle or to house his animals. Whereupon Master Pringle took huff, declaring that a bargain is a bargain, that he now had Master Vice- chancellour and Master Registrar by the short hairs, and that he would in no wise let 'em go till he had his tower. So tempers wax- ed hot, and the debate, having begun in the Examination Schools (the Sheldonian Theatre being then closed for repairs), was afterwards removed to the publique Play house, where the Wykehamicall oratours, by appearing on the stage in elongated masks and purple buskins, like tragick actours, could better inflame the passions of the auditours.

They began the debate by reproving us all forTlack of Faith. For if we had Faith (said they) as a grain of mustard-seed, we would know that their Tower, once built, and stacked with animals, would grow mightily and pierce the boundaries of knowledge, revealing new truths for the salvation of mankind. Whereupon our academical! Nestor, Sir Maurice Bowra, who has ruled over thirty-three generations of Wadham men, always running ahead of the youngest of them, stood up and, in a great voice, like old Simeon, cry'd out (in a rapture) that he saw a blessed vision of not one but twenty such towers, as in San Gimignano in Tus- cany, multiplying our salvation. He had scarcely sat down when there was a stir at the doors, and an auxiliary army of chymists marched in, under the command of Sir Hans Krebs, at the goose-step, to vote for the Tower, so that all now thought that the day was lost; as it would have been had it not been for two stout defenders of our liberty.

.The first of these was Master Blake (now Provost of the Queen's coll.), who, though a member of the Hebdomadal! Council, now deserted his brethren and attacked the Tower; which he did so gallantly that a great murmur of applause arose and Sir Maurice and the Wykehamicall party gnashed their teeth furiously. After him stood up a young man who said that he too was a zoologist and knew his animals, and then suddenly he wheeled about and de- clared that all this stuff about new truths was meer bunkum, for Master Pringle and his animals, bay they never so loud, would never overtake any new truth, their noses being all pointed in a clean contrary direc- tion. Which bold speeCh, whether rightly spoken or not (for that I presume not to judge) wrought marvellously upon the audit- ory, so that no more speeches by the Wyke- hamicall party, how tragical! soever, had any,effect; but when the vote was taken, 'twas found that Master Pringle's cloud- capp'd tower, and all the animals in it, had melted into air, into thin air, leaving not a rack behind.

'Twas much wondered at the time how that young man had ventured to make that speech, our great science professors wielding

such power and patronage, and making such privy treaties with one another (manus manum lavat), that few of their poor sub- jects dare dissent from them. But afterwards 'twas discovered that he had that very day been advanced to a place in Leeds, whither he was to leave that very afternoon, straight- way after making his speech; and so, having purchased his liberty, he was free, at that moment, to let the cat out of the bagg.

Thus Master Pringle lost his tower; but as 'tis impossible to keep a good man down, so our worthy professor did not despair, but so wrought on our governours that in the end he was licensed to build a small hutch for his animals, in the shape of a boat, like Noah his Ark. Whereupon he set to work. But behold, when that hutch was compleat, 'twas found (like mustard-seed) to have grown strangely: not a boat but a battleship, tenfold 'more dreadful and deform than what had been contemplated, so that all Oxon could not find zoologists or animals enough to fill million mice would be lost in a corner of it—and Master Pringle must needs find some new great monster to heave and sport in it, lest that vast empty hulk, towering over us, become a hollow joke in the university.

This new great monster is the new School of Humane Sciences which, after five years' incubation, has lately been hatch'd in our, midst. It first poked its beak through the shell last August when a scientific journal (Quaere, whence inspired?) trumpeted it abroad that this university had now boldly resolved to sweep away the old obsolete barriers betwixt one discipline and another and create a new course to end all course's; after which preamble, the monster itself clomb forth, squawking terribly in strange jargon, so that by now its whole nature is revealed. Tis a course for undergraduates only, who having come hither, aetate 18, with a smattering of school-knowledge, shall first, in three terms, frisk through the sciences of biology, geneticks, evolution, sociology, anthropology, geography, and animal noises (a science first practis'd only in the musick-halls, but now become acad-t emick), and then, in six further terms, by gadding to lectures here and there and tast ing other mep's courses, add seven further sciences, some theoretical!, others practical (as, for example, 'the technology of con- traception'), so that, in the end, they shall go forth as universall men, erudite de om- ni scibili, save that, by cramming all sciences into so brief a span, they shall never have had time to think of any of them.

All this being published abroad, we poor college codgers were at first at a daze and knew not what to do; but soon the guar- dians of our liberties again bestirred themselves, and put forth a petition, signed by many hands, praying our governours to stifle this monster in its nest, while it was yet young and callow; which gave occasion, on 18th ultimo, to a great debate in archbishop Sheldon's Theatre, wherein the former famous debate in the Playhouse was largely resumed. For on one side Master Pringle declared that this course, like that tower, would save the world and bring in the mil- lennium and make all things new, while on the other side 'twas urged by my Lord Franks and others that this was all piffle; that our duty is not to save the world but to teach the young men to think; and that 'twill be time enough for them to chew over these subjects when they have grown teeth of their own, and sharpened 'em on Aristotle, instead of being prematurely drench'd with such slopps, the swallowing whereof will turn 'em not into schollers or rational! men serviceable to the Common- wealth but into meer coffee-house oracles, fit only to puff each other's wisdom in the Sunday supplements that dazzle weak minds by smart patter on the telly.

So the battle swayed to and fro; but in the end, when the votes were counted, Master Blake being unhappily absent (at a Grand Feast, but this inter nos) and his great ad- versary Sir M. Bowra (though present and voting) being silent, the cause of liberty was lost by a narrow margin of 32 votes in 474; which votes, by my observation, were rather those of arts-men who wished to show them- selves progressive, and to be with it, and to yield to the forward march (as they sup- posed) of science, than of the true scientists who, for the most part, disdained this weak and watery hodge-podge. For the medicall men, biologists, chymists, apothecaries, an- thropologists etc, went out, in good order, by the same door as my Lord Franks and other men of sense, but the Balliol men and the long-haired young sociologists, et hoc genus omne, could be seen thrusting and jostling, pell-mell, at the other door.

However, think not that the battle is yet lost. For the margin of victory being so nar- row, the defeated party has exercised its right and demanded a postal vote, which is being held as I write and which closes next Mon- day. What shall be the issue of it none can foretell, but our busy-bodies are already astir and you can rest assured that the good old cause shall not die for lack of sustenance from Your loving brother to serve you MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS